And now for something completely different (and no, this is not the Monty Python post you are looking for)

I do not usually do this. It's not in my nature, it brings me a slight tinge of discomfort and even thinking about the next few words and sentences creates an unconscious discomfiting tickle in my upper intestinal lumen. My stomach is churning to right itself.

But like any good little trooper, I'm about to put on my Jay-Z best and perform the only previously stated: here comes the obligatory shout-out.

Specifically, and as some of you may know, I'm a fan of the Bat Segundo show, which was a salve for me especially back in the dark age of San Francisco and has become a staple of my Friday afternoon listening walks. More recently, I've gotten into the interviewer's -- Ed Champion's -- blog . More specifically still, the last two posts are, if anything, a source of both titillation and all around book-geek glee.

For your perusal:

1. The breakdown of Michiko Kakutani's The New York Times reviews loving entitled "Why Does Michiko Kakutani Hate Fiction So Much?" (with a nice self-deprecating nod to the author's own reviewing predilections).
   (g.m.'s response: yes, she has a lot of snarky reviews, yes, she reads a lot of crap as the pre-eminent review and thus a lot of marquee titles, but even the books she likes tend to be middle-brow, semi-sentimental drivel).
   
   
2. And this one I think I'm strictly enjoying as a point of public service, the (by all means not complete) list of Literary Podcasts. I do have to be frank in this one, as I've not listened to the majority of these, but for anyone who comments on the NYTimes's own Book Review podcast as "Every Friday, for fifteen minutes, the corporate yesman Sam Tanenhaus manages to take all the life out of books," well, for that, I have to give it credit. But it also happens to be a very wide-ranging list, complete with a list of reviews, commentary, readings, etc. It even breaks down for genre stuff.
   
   Now, if we could just get the same level of vitriol he has for the NYT (we feel it Ed, trust me) applied to the NPR/PRI bastard baby Selected Shorts, which if anything consistently throws out the most compelling list of bland on a weekly basis, well then I'd be happy.

And as a completely separate thing, completely on the Edward Champion kick, I have to throw out a nice little Bat Segundo with Robin Black delving into craft.

* * *

(ed. note: I understand. This just turned into a three-dotter. I will keep it short.)

[REDACTED]

(ed. note: on second thought, this section seemed moderately half-baked at the current moment, so will have to be saved for another day/post. Enjoy your weekend.)

Monday morning one-off

I'm procrastinating getting ready for work, and so in doing I stumbled on this article in the NYtimes: "A Quest to Read a Book a Day for 365 Days." Okay, so this is admirable: basically, this woman has decided to read a book every day for a year. I'm cool with that, to a point. But really, browsing her blog (Read All Day), her assessments are largely superficial. How many book are "beautiful," "wonderful," "one of the best"? Really, while I appreciate what this is, the act of reading, reading a piece of art should elicit a response beyond just the "hey, look, I'm reading."

Now, my father used to read quite a bit as well. Mack Bolan, Marcinko, the occasional Ludlum. Which is fine also, but nobody is going to equate this to reading of depth. These are novels designed for consumption, serving much the same purpose as a big loud explosiony hollywood blockbuster, and should be considered as such. What's my point here? Basically, reading a lot can dangerously lead to treating all books as crap.

To my avid readers out there, take stock. I'm talking (somewhat) to you. Not to complain, but mainly to say that there's more to a novel that sheer rampant consumption is not going to help. It's like physics: every action has its consequences. Reading is still a slow activity, that's where it gets its power. Reading fast is just wasting time.

Hmmm...this post felt like a waste of time. I'll revise it when I think of a point later.

A&P

I had a very short relationship with John Updike. I know, a great man of American letters, he was marvelously productive career. But I never read the novels, not the Rabbits or the Witches or really anything else save a few short stories. And maybe this explains my relatively messed up outlook on the world literature, but essentially I do end up getting a lot of my general judgments through my relationship to shorts. Whatever. I will shamelessly stick to that, understanding that the the bulk of the reading world holds writers more to their novelistic achievements versus work in the shorter, more direct and hybridized form. (quick bit of gm/sf lit theory: because of the limitations of style, the weight of each word in a short more often approaches the rules of poetry, but I'm digressing and not caring much.)

Anyway, my first taste of Updike was in a non-counting English course on Short fiction back at the University of Delaware. The story: "A&P." Funny enough, it's online, so read it and enjoy:
http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/

So of that generation, what's left? Vonnegut is long dead. Bellow passed, probably swatting the Grim Reaper in the nose on the way out. Stanley Elkin -- whose A Poetics for Bullies stands as one of my favorite shorts, period -- has been relegated to obscurity. Philip Roth now seems intent on only writing about the inevitable, to varying (mostly bad) degrees of success.

Well, in some ways it's about time. I would comment more, but the entire damned generation in some ways, while hitting a lot of the realistic flaneur notes (Thanks, James Wood), ultimately created a body of work that never punched me in the gut, with the few noted exceptions. That's my $0.02, but frankly for all its histrionics a lot of it felt flat. Whatever. A pure stylist can be decent but is ultimately lacking in emotional heft, a champion of the people dates him- or herself the second the words are put to page, a culture-specific icon can ultimately only go so far as the confines of cultural experience will allow: everything else will seem alien and somehow lack the all-important cultural punch to an Auslander of that culture. It's still going on, and at some point it's all navel-gazey, anyyway.

Okay, that was a tangential rant, my apologies if you all started to zone out there. My last image of Updike: on Charlie Rose a few weeks back, he was describing what it was like to revisit the Witches of Eastwick for his most recent title. And it was almost sad to watch somebody who I'd held in some esteem try to talk about lesbianism, etc. on a talk show. He sounded like a cross between a dirty old man and the prudish schoolnun. It's a weird combo, but he pulled it off. (btw, sorry about not being able to embed -- here's a link to the clip:
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9495)

So I lost my train of thought after that one. Guess I shouldn't be so surprised -- I've probably bored the shit out of all you all anyway. Time for more coffee.